Next Saturday, ADF team will run a stand in the French Insitute Open Day. A great occasion to meet us and discover our projects and IFASSEN ethical fashion items.

Mehdi Achour, ADF Director General in Morocco, Maud Laurencin, Development Manager and Elise Vanweydeveldt, Communications Manager, will be there from 10am to 6pm to tell you more about our green and ethical economy project in Eastern Morocco.

On this occasion, a collecting box will be installed to bring ADF’s craftswomen new discarded plastic bags!

Let’s meet in the French Institute (3 street Berkane, in Oujda) on the 5th of October 2013 !

To win the Audience Price, everybody can vote for the project of his choice, until the middle of November. ADF is counting on each of you to spread the word and vote to support the work that has been done in Eastern Morocco.

Voting is very quick ; after clicking on this link, you’ll have to give your first name, last name and email, for your vote to be taken into account.

The Association du Docteur Fatiha finishes the summer holidays on a high note, with 2 new awareness-raising actions this week.

One took part this very morning, in the Holidays Camp for teachers in Saidia. Sabah Ouali met about 50 people, from all ages, to present them our actions, and catch their attention on people’s look at waste.

Everybody enjoyed this morning of talkings, exchanges and games.

Tomorrow, ADF will be once again on the beaches around Moulouya’s mouth. Numerous families will be there, making the most of their last resting days.

In the next weeks, as soon as the children will be back to school, ADF will start this new year’s environmental education. Dedicated to children aged from 10 up to 12 years-old, new environmental-focused activities and games are to foresse ! New schools will join the program by the beginning of 2014.

Do not forget: ADF is looking for new volunteers who would like to spread the word about environmental issues and solutions. It can be either recurring or temporary. To join our dynamic team and attend to the September training, write to sabah.ouali@adf-global.org.

This morning, the Association du Docteur Fatiha met 2M, the Moroccan national channel, while leading an awareness-raising campaign with children and young people.

You will soon see this report on TV, focusing on our activities with the summer camp in Tafoghalt. As soon as we know more about the exact broadcast time and day, we will tell you. [Sunday, 18th, evening news report]. So keep connected on our facebook page.

Two sensitization days were planned dedicated to the global waste issue.

This morning, Sabah Ouali presented our actions before the children to put on ADF’s tee-shirts and gloves to clean up the next wood. All in all, 1 200 liters of waste were collected !

91 children aged from 8 to 15

took part in our activities on the 16th and the 17th

The families of Tafoghalt and Berkane go quite often to Tafoghalt forests to have lunch. As a consequence, there were quite a lot to do! What was most picked up? Tuna tins, cans, milk bags, plastic bottles, even dippers, shoes, blankets and plastic bags of course !

ADF has got plenty of ideas to reuse garbage ; first plastic bags which can be turned into fashion accessories (www.ifassen.com), but we also transform plastic bottles into pencils holders, or juce cartons into wallets.

Tomorrow, the young Oujdis will make their own. A great opportunity for them to have a new look at “waste”.

All the region’s inhabitants know the place : the Camel Cave. It’s the perfect place for a picnic, in the middle of the mountains.

In the core of the Beni Snassen uplands, the cave looks out over the valley of Oued Farrouj, tributary to Oued Zegzel. Considered as a haven of piece and of beauty for its quietness, its landscapes and its fruit trees, there nonetheless a cloud on the horizon : waste.

Now the summer has arrived, it became very difficult to find a small place spared by garbage and plastic waste.

Last 13th of June, ADF decided to act, in order to improve the situation. While explaining to people the importance of protecting nature and this very natural site, a cleaning campaign was led.

With Peace Corps and volunteers from the Youth Center el Majd, from Berkane, the cleaning was efficient. All in all, 18 100-liters bags were filled with garbage. The wonderful site is now free from them. It can now go on being an unavoidable place for leisure in the region.

ADF is proud to annonce you the creation of a fund to cover the scolarship fees of our crafstwomen’s children.

Thanks to the great help from a Moroccan living abroad, who does not wish to be quoted, the association will fund the fees related to the scolarship of 10 children. In 2013, 3 boys and 7 girls will also benefit from this fund. The administrative costs linked to their scolarship, the supplies and required outfits will be paid by ADF. Visual examination and glasses fees were also taken into account for Amina Tarifit, 9 years-old to attend her lessons in the best conditions.

This action falls within ADF wish to support education. Recently, thanks to the gifts made by printers and supplies sellers, ADF could deal notebooks and pens to the pupils of Chouihiya school that needed most.

In may 2013, ADF set up in Berkane a cartoon workshop, focusing on the plastic bags issue. 17 young people could take part in this chance to give their impression on the environmental situation of their hometown.

The kids began to imagine a scenario. If the theme was set (plastic pollution), they did not lack ideas to turn it their way.

Their plot: a plastic monster attacks Berkane, the Clementine’s capital! They choose to make ADF intervene and help them struggle against the giant. The first sketches were drawn during this 2.5 hours session. How to draw a plastic bag monster? And a city? Not very easy at first sight…

3rd session: drawing techniques and hard working

The cartoonist had worked on his side, to gather the kids’ ideas into a 2-pages cartoon. The young people then had to realize the final drawings.

First with a drawing pencil, then with a thin black felt pen, they had lots to do! The bullets were not filled: the texts was added on computer, so that we could have both an Arabic and French version.

4th session: coloring plastic bags

The last session took part without the cartoonist, who had come back to his grey France. The young Moroccans added the color to their drawings on computer. It was not easy to agree on which color to choose on the 4 different parts of the cartoon!

All in all, 10 hours were necessary to create those 2 pages. But the result is worth it.

“Don’t tell me one single woman can’t change the world. If I had thought so, nothing would, indeed, have changed.” Faiza Hajji, Founder of ADF

Those are the words of Faiza Hajji, the driving force behind the Association du Docteur Fatiha (ADF). Faiza launched ADF in 2008 to bring sustainable development to her region while fostering women’s empowerment.

Today, more than 60 rural women receive a regular income thanks to ADF’s programs, more than 1.000 children have met ADF teams and were sensitized about environmental protection. This enabled ADF to collect and reuse more than 25.000 plastic bags, since its creation.

For Faiza, this is just the beginning. What’s next for ADF has never been done before in Morocco: Transform the impoverished community of “Douar el Mika–” the “neighborhood of plastic bags–” into the site of an innovative mega-center dedicated to spurring a local green economy. The project is called “Dar al Amal,” which means House of Hope in Arabic and is slated to be a beacon of hope in any area where many people feel their options are limited.

“Douar el Mika is one of the poorest areas in Berkane. Full of young people feeling angry about being born in a place that left them so little choice about their future. They have this special energy that makes for great change-makers. We simply need to give them a chance.”

Host and train young Moroccan entrepreneurs dedicated to sustainable development and social change through its young entrepreneur incubator program

Lead research efforts to develop innovative income-generating activities for impoverished rural women and generate fresh ideas to address ecological issues of the region

Provide impoverished populations with a free access to cultural events and learning opportunities organized in a new community center and library

Offer a safe and healthy environment for local population to live and work

Foster women’s empowerment through professional trainings and literacy courses

Develop and pilot new income-generating activities, based on waste reuse

Be a self-sustaining model of a smart, green, eco-friendly, traditional, and inexpensive architecture

Why we need $5,000?

Thanks to our generous institutional backer, Legallais Foundation, ADF has been able to launch the feasibility study with the award-winning Moroccan-Canadian architect Aziza Chaouni, who specializes in green and sustainable architecture.

ADF is now ready to move into the materials research phase of this project. Our goal is to not only build Morocco’s first center for the environment and green jobs, but to also build a center that models environmental responsibility in the use of its building materials. Our goal is to build Dar al Amal completely from local and/or recycled materials that showcases traditional Moroccan architecture. This is fundamental as we want the center to be built with local and/or recycled materials. With your help, we can complete our research phase of materials that will ensure that Dar al Amal is built with the most effective, efficient, and energetically passive materials.

One woman has changed her community. Imagine what a crowd could do?

ADF dedicates this project and works tirelessly for all of the dynamic young people who can’t find a job and who want to build a better future for themselves; for all of the impoverished young people who have ambition but no means to envision a different future from their parents’. For every man and woman willing to contribute to the improvement of their life and their environment, or willing to act for their community, we stand united and ready to create change with you.

We thank you for joining us to put in place the foundation stone to a center, The House of Hope, that will give young people the opportunity to explore their dreams and potential, interrupt the intergenerational cycle of poverty, and set the standard for a green economy in Morocco. With you standing by us in support, we know that we can transform the neighborhood of plastic into a neighborhood of dreams.

This week-end, to celebrate World Migratory Bird Day, ADF invited children to observe Berkane’s white storks.

An important group has chosen to settle in the core of the city, to build its nests and raise its babies. The association APROCIB, chaired by Mr Chemlali organized this event together with ADF. 5 children from eco-families wanted to join. 7 others who were just passing-by also stopped, together with grown-ups attracted by the formed group. Equiped with binoculars, they could observe the storks, busy to feed their new-borns. Indeed, there’s work to do: a baby-stork remain about 2 months in the nest, and need about 5 000 mice to grow up !

Men and their activities put more and more at risk those places, directly or not. It becomes urgent to protect the natural spaces that storks choose to make a break in their long journey. Their survival depends on how we manage to protect every stop on their path, which provide them with food, rest and nests.

They are families of Berkane who decided to contribute actively to our activities. They collect plastic bags at home and from acquaintances for our craftswomen to get the required materials to produce fashion accessories.

Today, ADF already collects plastic bags in 6 schools of the region, in several dry-cleaners and drugstores, and in more than 10 eco-families. We are actually working on the strenghening of our collecting network. New schools and dry-cleaners will be joining the network by the end of June.

Collecting plastic bags is fundamental for ADF to provide carftswomen with the raw material they nee. ADF bring them the bags, once cleaned in its offices of the 81 rue Zehroun.

You’re from Berkane and also want to bring us plastic bags? Here are the collecting spots or come to visit our offices !

The Association du Docteur Fatiha has been working on this for a while: Dar al Amal. Thanks to the support we got from Legallais Foundation, we can at least show you its content.

ADF team in Morocco is buzzing. Legallais Foundation decided to support our brand-new project: building a big urban center, dedicated to a green and social economy. Named “Dar al Amal”, which means House of Hope in Arabic, the center will actively create green jobs and spread an ecological culture. Click here to know more about our project.

This corporate foundation, created in 2010, acts everyday to foster sustainable development and social responsibility. It was therefore delighted with our project and will fund its very 1st phase: feasibility study and drawings realization.

ADF launches the feasibility study

Mehdi Achour, General Director of ADF in Morocco and Elise Vanweydeveldt, Communications Manager, went to Fès on the 29th of April, to meet the architect team they are working with on this. Aziza Chaouni and Johann Petersmann could ask them plenty of questions about the way the center should be conceived. Built out of natural or recycled materials, the center aims at being a model of a smart, energetically efficient, environmental-friendly and cheap architecture.

Aziza Chaouni, Mehdi Achour and Elise Vanweydeveldt

To put in place the foundation stone, we need you!

To help ADF fund Dar al Amal construction, we need every single one of you. To give young Berkanis a chance to commit themselves to their city and their community. To support women’s work and empowerment. To bring a global response to the environmental issues of the region, especially the proliferation of polluting waste. To give the will to build differently, more efficiently, more environment-friendly. To bring hope to a city that is falling asleep on its misery.

“Don’t tell me one single woman can’t change the world. If I had thought so, nothing would, indeed, have changed. But I never stopped believing that I could do something, with my own means, to improve the situation of my region of origins.

Picture this : an isolated Moroccan region and city, Berkane, where plastic bags follow the wind’s breaths and fly among people, cars and donkeys. When you live the city you are struck by the emptiness of its countryside…at first sight! Since, when you have a closer look, you notice that it is far away from being empty. You go on and meet so many people, shepherds, children, men… The time is like frozen : nothing moves, everybody waits. For what? A taxi to go to the city, a bus to go to school, or a little sun to warm up after a cold morning. Just waiting outside because nothing happens at home.

Actually you don’t really see women outside. They take care of the kids and of the house, cooking, cleaning up, weaving… When you come to know them, you realize their life has nothing to do with yours. You were the lucky one : born in Berkane in a family where girl’s education and independence was fundamental. Most of rural women in Eastern Morocco can’t read nor write. They barely went to school.

That’s when I got an idea : teach them how to weave alpha, a local plant, together with recycled plastic bags. Once graduated, I created the Association du Docteur Fatiha (ADF), from the name of my deceased mom, to empower women and fight for environmental protection. We gather rural women in cooperatives: they become a group which is trained and receives literacy courses. To provide them with the raw materials they need (i.e. plastic bags), ADF establishes collecting spots in the city and organizes awareness-raising campaigns in schools of the region. In that way, two issues are addressed in a raw, which creates a sound virtuous circle. This is for what I’ve been doing since 2008.

Formation des artisanes à Chouihiya centre

Today, it’s time for the association to step up. I want to build an innovative center, dedicated to promoting a local and green economy. It will be a place where hope is possible. For all those graduated and dynamic young people who can’t find a job and change country to try building a better future for themselves. For all those impoverished young people who have ambition but no means to envision a different future from their parents’. For every man and woman willing to contribute to the improvement of their life and their environment, or willing to act for their community.

For all those great people who need a little help to kick off their project or take charge of their own future, I want to build this place.

The Association du Docteur Fatiha started its activities back in 2008. After only 5 years implementing its programs, ADF scales up. The project: build an urban center, dedicated to a green and social economy.

Legallais Foundation decided to support our project and will fund the very 1st part of it: the case study and the drawings realization. With this first backer, the project can be launched!

Named “Dar al Amal”, which means House of Hope in Arabic, the center will actively create green jobs and spread an ecological culture.

Context

Morocco and the Eastern region, have to deal with a major employment issue. Young people have troubles finding jobs, even when graduated. However, so many things can be put in place here. The environmental situation is alarming.

Our solution

Every single young person should be part of the improvement of his city or community. In Berkane, they lack a personal support for them to create and manage their project. ADF wishes to build the capacities of young people willing to act, especially those from impoverished background.

Dar al Amal will be built on a former landfill, set in the heart of an impoverished area, “Douar ell Mika” (the “neighborhood of plastic bags”).

This building will be a model of green architecture, in its construction but also in its management: energy savings, renewable energies, water management…

The architecture and materials from Berkane will be associated to sustainable and innovative construction methods, to international standards in eco-design. Recycled materials will be used as much as possible in the building, the design and interior furniture.

Using resources that can be considered as “waste” will pave the way to new building techniques, greener and more adapted to a sustainable development.

ADF wants to involve young people and local craftsmen in the center construction, for them to master new know-hows and to be able to transpose them.

The center’s ingredients

The building will be divided into several sectors, dedicated to specific activities:

•the meetings between involved populations;

•the support to young project initiators;

•cultural events on environmental issues;

•the research for good environmental-friendly practices;

•trainings to revenue-generating activities based on recycling processes;

•ecological leisure…

1. Offices and incubator

to host young Moroccan entrepreneurs, acting for sustainable development and social and solidarity economy

2. Community Center, lab for green ideas

It will provide the populations with work spaces, a library, free internet access. ADF will lead research to develop revenue-generating activities (for impoverished rural women) and bring alternatives to ecological issues of the region, as plastic bags pollution. ADF will also organize plenty of events to raise-awareness among young generations to environmental issues (workshops, debates, movies castings, etc.).

3. Organic café

which will also serve as a sales area for our handicraft products

4. Bed and Breakfasts

to promote eco-tourism the region and host regular projects visitors (designers), or artists

5. Public child-care center

6. Park and educational vegetable garden

7. Administration

8. Housing for staff

Dar Al Amal will quickly become an unavoidable place for community service and for social and green economy in Berkane and in the whole region.

It will also be a place where an alternative vision of leisure and environmental protection can be born.

To put in place the foundation stone, we need you!

To help ADF fund Dar al Amal construction, we need every single one of you. To give young Berkanis a chance to commit themselves to their city and their community. To support women’s work and empowerment. To bring a global response to the environmental issues of the region, especially the proliferation of polluting waste. To give the will to build differently, more efficiently, more environment-friendly. To bring hope to a city that is falling asleep on its misery.

You’re living in Berkane or its surroundings and you want to be part of the cleaning-up of your region? Collect and bring your used plastic bags to our collecting spots (you can see the list below). Feel welcome to step-by at our offices ; we’ll be honored to show you what we are doing with your colored plastic bags !

Faiza Hajji and the Association du Docteur Fatiha launched a their new project to spread their outreach in Eastern Morocco.

How would you react, if we told you that it’s possible to combine organic cultivation, social and green entrepreneurship, eco-tourism and awaireness-raising campaigns to environmental issues? For sure, you’d support us !

On the 21st of March, to celebrate the International Day of Forests, the Association du Docteur Fatiha went to Chouihiya for a tree-planting

In Chouihiya, the schoolyard is rather barren. Children don’t have so many shadow to protect them from the Moroccan sun. ADF decided to solve the problem.

18 olive trees ware planted in the schoolyard, with the children’s help

About 40 pupils helped us planting the young trees. Dispatched into small groups, they could take care of one tree fro A to Z.

For the cildren to better understand and take care of trees

This action took place in the framework of a larger awareness-raising campaign, that ADF leads in Eastern Morocco. Every month, our team visit 6 schools of the region to talk about environmental issues. Last month, it was about recycling. This time, Emmanuelle Pannetier, Project Manager, and Sabah Ouali, Local Coordinator, wanted to focus on forests. What can a tree be used for? What is it composed of? The motto was : a better comprehension for a better protection.

The Association du Docteur Fatiha wants to thank Chouihiya’s teachers and principal for their help, as well as el Wafae nursery, in Zaio, who gave us the young trees.

The content of this newsletter : our joint actions with a 4L Trphy crew, the latest awareness-raising campaigns in Berkane, but also the first pictures of our upcoming collection, soon on sale Ifassen.com, our partner !

It is essential for ADF to involve new generations in the protection of their environment. As tomorrow’s adults and actors, they should know more about the impacts of people on nature and how to guard it against deteriorations.

This is why the Association du Docteur Fatiha built meaningful partnerships with schools in Berkane and Chouihiya, both located in Eastern Morocco.

Emmanuelle Pannetier, in charge of the sensitization project here, on the field, and Sabah Ouali, local coordinator, met almost 700 children this month. Each intervention lasts at least 1.30 hours. On the menu : go into more depth on environmental pollution and the risks which are related to it, as well as detail simple gestures to preserve nature.

Sensitization – School of Chouihiya

Eco gestures drawings – School of Salmane el Farissi, Berkane

Discovering the drawings – School of Melouya, Berkane

All those interventions went well : the pupils are always curious and willing to learn more about environmental protection. They will meet our team for other workshops organized in the following months. The next encounter will happen at the end of March, for a recycling activity. Nothing is more fundamental than involving children into the learning process, for them to better understand the impact of their gestures on their daily-life and environment.

A quote to illustrate our approach : “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” Benjamin Franklin

Know more : ADF also set up cleaning campaigns in Berkane’s schools. See the post.

Confirmed by the success of its historical cooperatives, the Association du Docteur Fatiha wants to broaden its outreach. A new cooperative joined the project. Located in Chouihiya, a rural village 30 kilometers away from Berkane, the women who are part of it are being trained.

If they want to get an extra-revenue, the women living in Moroccan countryside do not have so many choices. To improve their standard of living and their families, it is hard, not to say impossible, for them to find a job. Most of them are illiterate and geographically isolated. Their universe means their home.

That’s why they granted our project a warm welcome. At the end of December, 47 women subscripted to the free training organized by ADF. The purpose of this training: in about 15 sessions, learn how to weave a local plant (alpha) together with plastic bags and create fashion accessories like bags or wallets.

Craftswomen training in Chouihiya

Jamaa Ouezhir, Training and Recycling Techniques Manager for ADF, has already given 9 courses of about 2.30 hours. The women who knew how to weave alpha before they joined the project are now able to manufacture some of our accessories.

With this brand-new cooperative, ADF’s activities spread a little bit more in Eastern Morocco region. Our goal before 2014: find, contact and train 2 more women’s cooperatives, to bring them a decent job and help improving their life standards.

The UN launched this month a wide discussion, between citizens all over the world. This debate is the first step of a global consultation, to take stock on the MDG, the Millenium Development Goals, and prepare post-2015.

An interactive platform was put in place, for everyone to tell his own story and experience, and argue for the future he wants. In short, bring his voice to the world-wide consultations.

During 2012, Marion Deballon, our local director, and Sabah Ouali, our local coordinator, made interventions in primary schools, like Imame Chatibi and Ibn Zaydoun, or in secondary schools, like Collège Al Qods.

Their purpose: raise awareness among the children and inspire them to protect their environment.

ADF is back in schools to reinforce its environment education. And it is made via games ! Next Tuesday (18th December 2012), they will be 48 pupils to take part in a cleaning campaign of their school.

After a presentation of our activities in Berkane, ADF teams and the children will clean the school, equiped with tee-shirts and gloves.

Every month, ADF’s team will organize activities in Berkane schools (recycling workshops, cleaning campaigns…) for children aged between 9 and 10.

By the end of the year they should have a better understanding of the connections between environmental protection and their quality of life. In Berkane, notably in “Douar el mika” (the plastic bags neighborhood), waste management is a very sensitive issue. It is thanks to the new generations that the situation may evolve in the future.

Those actions are incorporated with the framework of a larger objective : support sustainable development policies and projects, and back up women’s work, for them to improve their living conditions.

The Association du Docteur Fatiha has been acting since 2008 in Eastern Morocco to favor :

In the framework of a partnership with the South Agency and the UNDP, the “Association du Docteur Fatiha” worked with more than 100 women from 7 different cooperatives in oasis of the Saharan Morocco. ADF helped them designing and marketing new palm tree weaving products.
We are very pleased to present you these wonderful tables, which can bring a design and hand-made touch to your interior decoration.

This table is made out of braided palm sheets assembled with a black wrought iron leg. Diameter 50cm. Sale price : 40€.

This table is made out of braided palm sheets assembled with a yellow wrought iron leg. Diameter 55cm. Sale price : 50€.

For more information about ADF’s partnership with the Southern cooperatives, click here.

If you want more information, do not hesitate to send a email to brenda.caurant@adf-global.org or phone her : +33 6 69 22 54 99.